Wednesday, May 20, 2009
In the course of a two-year project, the EPO interviewed around 150 key players - including critics - from the fields of science, business, politics, ethics, economics and law, seeking their opinions on how intellectual property and patenting might evolve over the next fifteen to twenty years. Four scenarios - relevant and plausible stories about the future - were developed in a series of workshops from their answers.
Each scenario examines the future from a different perspective:
Market Rules (business)
The story of consolidation in the face of a system that has been so successful that it is collapsing under its own weight
Whose Game? (geopolitics)
The story of conflict in the face of changing geopolitical balances and competing ambitions
Trees of Knowledge (society)
The story of erosion in the face of diminishing societal trust
Blue Skies (technology)
The story of differentiation in the face of global systemic crises
Read
- about the background to the project
- about the process
- about the discussions at the European Patent Forum
- the open-ended interviews
- the detailed interviews
- selected pages from the compendium
- the whole "Scenarios for the Future" compendium as a bookmarked PDF
- a selection of articles and comments about the Scenarios
- about other scenarios
